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— and after focussing it he retired to the scullery which must have been darkened for the purpose, sensitised the big sheet of glass and then placed it all wet in the dark-slide, took it out to the camera and made the exposure before the plate got dry.
When dry-plate photography came to be invented a year or so later, he made the plates in large batches at a time and stored them for future use. He had a smaller camera by then but he still coated upon large glasses and cut them up later, and that sometimes left a narrow strip which I won — to experiment with! My eyes were just high enough to see over the edge of the table, gloating, and longing that there might be a strip of waste for me. Once he had a run of bad luck with his diamond and made a whole lot of faulty cuts. Then, for the only time in his life, so far as I know, he lost his temper. He smashed up all the pieces with the back of his diamond, and I burst into a flood of tears.
Many years later as I sat beside his bed in his last illness we talked of things which somehow had never been mentioned between us before. I was a grown man by then, married and full of business cares, but our talking often concerned my early childhood and that is why it crops up in this place. He reminded me of this dryplate episode, and then he told me how utterly ashamed he had been when his outburst of temper made me cry. But it wasn't his feelings I was crying about — it was the loss of the little strips of glass I had been counting upon.
I told him that one of my very earliest memories was of him carrying me up in his arms from floor to floor of a huge windmill. He remembered it, too, but was very surprised that I did, for I was only eighteen months old. I could remember the strong pressure of his arms as he held me tight to him while he climbed the ladders, and it was the comfort of those arms that saved me from being terrified by the noise and the shuddering and shaking of the whole place.
I remember my first homecoming. I had been sent to stay with my grandmama, probably while my sister Dorothy was being born — she is fifteen months younger than I — and then, because of severe financial stringency at home, I was left to stay there for another year or so.
Grandmama lived in a tall old basement house in Lansdowne Road, Clapham. She was one of innumerable sisters; a stream of great-aunts who were always floating in and out around her. They varied very much but most of them were nice and had quite good
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